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CJMAN BEINQS NOT PROPERTY, 



^ECH OF HON, OWEN LOYEJOY, 



>/ 



OF ILLINOIS. 



Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 17, 1858. 



Mr. Chairman : Before entering 
upon the consideration of the subject 
which is to be the principal theme of 
discussion, I desire to submit a few pre- 
liminary remarks as to the real nature 
of the contest in which we are engaged. 
To my apprehension, it is greatly desi- 
rable that we have a distinct and well- 
defined understanding of the conflict — 
for conflict it is — in which we are en- 
gaged, of the principles involved, and of 
the parties arrayed. 

It is not, then, let me say, a conflict 
between the North and the South — a 
sectional strife between two portions of 
the country. I deem it unfortunate that 
the terms North and South are so fre- 
quently employed to designate the oppo- 
sing forces in this contest. What is 
there to array the North against the 
South, or the South against the North 7 
Nothing ; so far as I can see", absolutely 
nothing. Is there any competition be- 
tween the products of these two porti-ons 
of our common country % Do the maize, 
wheat, and sorghum, of the North, envy 
the rice, cotton, and cane, of the South l 
On the other hand, the territorial extent 
of our country, the variety of its pro- 
ductions, and the range of its climate, 
are, if left to their natural operation, 
elements of strength, union, prosperity, 
and harmony. This complicated yet 
concordant unity is happily expressed 
in language employed for that purpose 
by one who has passed away : 
" Not chaos-like together crushed bruised ; 

But like the world harmoniously confused, 

Where order in variety we see ; 

And where, though all things differ, all agree." 

If there is anything in the land that 
would destroj^ or even weaken this m3's- 
tic, yet potent agency, that binds us 
togetlier as a Confederacy, and which 
would hurl us in disjointed fragments 
into ruin and chaos, let it be brought to 
the altar of patriotism and slain. 

What, then, is the source of this moral 



strife, which at times wears an aspect so 
threatening and terrific ? The source of 
the calamities which befel the Grecians 
in the Trojan war is recited in the open- 
ing lines of the Iliad : 

" Achilles's wrath, to Greece the direful spring 
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing." 

What Achilles's wrath was to Greece, 
Slaver}^ is to our own country — the pro- 
lific spring of. woes unnumbered. Not 
the discussion, not the agitation of the 
subject of Slavery, but the existence of 
Slaver}^ itself. The conflict, then, is not 
between the North and the South, but 
between Freedom and Slavery — between 
the principles of liberty and those of des- 
potism. The free States (I speak it with 
shame) have advocates of Slavery exten- 
sion ; the slave States (I mention it with 
joy) have many hearts that are loy;il to 
Freedom, and these liege men will be 
greatly multiplied ere many years roll 
away. I venture the prediction. The great 
mistake has been in identifying the South 
with Slavery and slaveholding — in iising 
the words as convertible terras. There 
is a class who advocate the rightfulness, 
perpetuity, and nationality of Slavery, 
who seem to think that they are the 
South. Any attack on Slavery, with its 
nameless wrongs and pollutions and 
usurpations, is construed into an assault 
on the South, and is called sectionalism. 

But supposing Slavery were not, would 
there not still be a South ? Would not 
its rivers flow, its forests wave, and its 
soil and mines yield their annual and 
accustomed tribute 1 What if the class 
indicated — a class infinitesimal as com- 
pared with the population of the entire 
Union, and numerically insignificant as 
compared with the whole population of 
the South — what, I say, if this entire 
class should be annihilated by a single 
blow of that slumbering Justice at whose 
anticipated wakening Jefferson trem- 
bled ; or be found, on some morning 



2 



heaps of slain, like the hosts of Sennach 
erib, pallid in their couch like the first 
born of Egypt, or buried like the horse- 
men of Pliaroah, beneath the avenging 
"wave : would there not still be a South? 
What if the earth should open and 
swallow master and slave together : 
would there not be a class left, more 
than equal in numbers to that of both 
the others, to wit : the non-slaveholders 
of the slave States, who, if freed from 
the presence and blight of Slavery, would 
divide the Territory into small freeholds, 
and commence a process of recuperation 
that would ultimately bring back the 
South to its original position, and make 
it the pride and glory of the whole land ? 
Or — Avhat is really desirable, and con- 
templating the only peaceful and blood- 
less and just exodus which I can see for 
the slave, and the only proper cessation 
of this conflict — supposing the present j enviable 
dominant class in the slave States, look- 1 to do it 1 
ing at this subject in the light of history, 
in the light of the inevitable workings 
and final triumphs of free principles, 
elevating themselves above the political 
expedients and shifts of a day, and 
taking broad, humane, and patriotic 



Yorktown. Have you the man — the 
hdro 1 If so, let him ride forth, and you 
shall see whether we are a sectional 
party or not. 

Opportunity rare ! Have any of j^ou 
a heart to improve it 1 Would you have 
your sculptured form fill some niche 
which is now vacant in these new Halls, 
or perpetuated on canvas and hung up 
amid the illustrious dead that now orna- 
ment the rotunda? Seize, then, this 
opportunity ; forswear allegiance to Sla- 
very, and take the oath of fealty to Free- 
dom. You can gain no permanent re- 
nown in fighting for oppression ; or, if 
you achieve fame, it will be like that of 
the madman who applied the torch to 
the temple of Ephesus — a bad pre-em- 
inence. Some of you have the mental 
gifts and culture and position to achieve 
a fame that should be permanent and 
Have you the moral heroism 

" Fear not ; spurn the worldling's laughter, 

Thine ambition trample thou; 
Thou shalt find a long hereafter 

To be more than tempts thee now." 

Let us, then, hear nothing more of 
North and South. We make no assault 



views of this subject, should, by some ; on the rights of the South ; it is the 
wise process, rid themselves of this wrongs and aggressions of Slavery with 
malign system : would there not still be | which we grapple. 'I'he South, the cit- 
a South — a South jubilant, a country j izens of the South, have all the rights, 
joyous, a world glad, and Heaven itself j privileges, and immunities, of the citi- 
clotht'd in benignant smiles of approba- zens of the North or West. Let those 
tion 1 I rights be guarantied and protected, any- 

Then would be fulfilled that Divine where and everywhere, " to tiie fullest 



injunction graven on the bell that used, 
in olden times, to summon the fathers 
to their deliberations in Independence 
Hall — " Proclaim liberty throughout the 
land, to all the inhabitants thereof." 
What an opportunity is here present 



extent — to the fullest extent, sir." 

The King of France, Louis XIV, in 
view of the union of that country and 
Spain, said, " there are no longer any 
Pyrenees." And I say, let there be no 
longer any Mason and Dixon's line ; let 



ed to tlie true heroic men of the South — : it disappear, and let the country be one 
an opportunity that never occurs but ! united Avhole ; the rights of alf equally 
once during the lifetime of an Individ- i respected, equally sacred, 
ual, and but seldom in the cycles of gen- I But, as to Slavery, that is a different 
erations ! Oh, that thou hadst known, I thing. Whatever legal sanction it may 



at least at this thy day, the things that 
belong to thy peace and true glory ! I 



have, under municipal statutes, it has no 
constitutional sanction, save the nega- 



pray God that they may not be hidden | tive one of being let alone; while it 
from your eyes. The first Revolution | skulics under and behind the sovereignty 
found a leader from the South. The , of the States, beyond the reach of the 



hosts of Freedom, now marshalled in 
grand and goodly array, having passed 
their Bunker Hill, ask the South for a 
Jeader to take them to Saratoga and 



delegated powers of the Federal Gov- 
ernment. But where that Government 
has exclusive jurisdiction, it has no right ; 
m^ it ha.s no moral right anywhere, and 



, <;^no suitable abode out of those penal 
■^ fires that are never qucuclied. It is a 
^ very Caliban. 

" Moustrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui 
lumen adempt'um." 

And this brings me, sir, to the ques- 
*" tion wliich I desire to discuss — -the ques- 
tion not only of the daj^, but of the age — 
the most important question that has 
agitated the country since the Revolu- 
tion, and the most solemn and grave one 
■with which Chi'istian civilization has had 
to grapple in modern times. 

The President, in his message, claims, 
or raither assumes, that human beings 
are property in the absolute and un- 
qualified sense — property, as the gra- 
zing ox or the bale of merchandise is 
property ; and that the tenure of this 
property is a natural and indefeasible 
right, guarantied by the Constitution. 
And it has been averred on the floor of 
this House, that, as an abstract prin- 
ciple, the system of American Slavery 
was right, having the sanction of natural 
and of revealed religion. As the whole 
of this discussion, in its real merits, 
hinges on this principle or dogma, I con- 
front it at the very threshold, and deny 
it. I afiirm that it has not the sanction 
of natural or revealed religion, or of the 
Constitution. 

■I need not say that this is a new doc- 
trine, unknoAvn to the fathers and found- 
ers of the Republic. Indeed, till within 
a very few years. Slavery was acknowl- 
edged by all classes, in the slave no less 
than in the free States, to be an evil, 
social, moral, and political — a wrong to 
the slave, a detriment to the master, 
and a blight on the soil ; its very exist- 
ence deplored, and its ultimate extermi- 
nation looked forward to with earnest 
and often impatient hope. It was re- 
garded as the relic of a barbarous age, 
Avhich must disappear before the advan- 
cing civilization of the present. It was 
deemed to be contrary to the benign 
spirit and precepts of the Cliristian re- 
ligion, which would ere long supplant it. 
Many of its ablest and truest opponents 
Avere reared in the midst of it, and could 
be called neither intermeddlers nor 
fanatics. No one pretended that it had 
any right whatever beyond the limits of 
the local laws Avhich created and pro- 
tected it. 



But all this is changed now. The 
demon of Slavery has come forth from 
the tombs. It has grown bold, and de- 
fiant, and impudent. It has left its 
lair, lifted its shameless front towards 
the skies, and, with horrid contortions 
and gyrations, mouths the heavens, and 
mutters its blasphemies about having 
the sanction of a holy and just God; 
dodges behind the national compact, and 
grins and chatters out its senile pueril- 
ities about constitutional sanction ; and 
then, like a very fantastic ape, jumps 
upon the bench, puts on ermine and 
wig, and pronounces the dictim that a 
certain class of human beings have no 
rights which another class are bound to 
regard ; and then it claims the right to 
stalk abroad through the lengtii and 
breadth of the land, robbing the poor 
free laborer of his heritage, trampling 
on Congressional prohibitions, crushing 
out beneath its tread State sovereignty 
and State Constitutions. It claims the 
right to pollute the Territories with its 
slimy footsteps, and then makes its way 
to the very home of Freedom in the free 
States, carried there on a constitutional 
palanquin, manufactured and borne aloft 
on the one side by a Democratic Execu- 
tive, and on the other by a Democratic 
Jesuit Judge ! It claims the right to 
annihilate free schools — for this its very 
presence achieves — to hamper a free 
press, to defile the pulpit, to corrupt re- 
ligion, and to stifle free thought and free 
speech ! It claims the right to convert 
the fruitful field into a wilderness, so 
that forests shall grow up around grave- 
yards, and the populous village become 
a habitation for owls. It claims the 
right to transform the free laborer, by a 
process of imperceptible degradation, to 
a condition only not worse than that of 
the slave. Yes, sir, while the border ruf- 
fians are striving, by alternate violence 
and fraud, to force Slavery into Kansas, 
the President and Chief Justice, by new, 
unheard of, and most unwarrantable in- 
terpretations of the Constitution, are 
endeavoring to enthrone and nationalize 
Slavery, and make it the dominant pow- 
er in the land ; and are calling upon the 
people, in the name of Democracy, to 
crowd up to the temple gates of this 
demon worship ! And all this upon the 
false, atrocious, and impious avermeutj 



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that human beings are property ! Again 
I meet this doctrine, and spurn it. The 
Supreme Being never intended that hu- 
man beings should be property. 

In those far-off solitudes of the past, 
■when that sublime manifestation of 
Almiirhty power was to be made in the 
formation of a human being, what was the 
utterance that fell from the Divine lips ? 
" And God said, let us make man in our 
own image, after our likeness ; and in 
the image of God created he him." 
Made but little lower than the angels, 
crowned with glory and honor, there 
stood man, the delegated lord and pos- 
sessor of the earth, and of all the irra- 
tional existence with which it teemed. 
This similitude of man to God is a real- 
ity. There is, in man's spiritual na- 
ture, a miniature God — debased this 
likeness may be, disfigured and dim, still 
there is the Divine tracery. The pearl 
may be in the oozy bed of ocean's slime ; 
still it is capable of being burnished and 
made to glisten in the firmament of a 
•future and immortal life. 

When a monarch confides his signet 
ring to another, though that other be a 
beggar, that symbol carries Avith it the 
power and protection of royalty. And 
on whatever being the Divine artist has 
traced the image of himself, 1 insist that 
that being cannot, without wrong and 
impiety, be made an article of property. 
This spiritual existence with which man 
is endowed — this transcript of the Crea- 
tor's likeness — is not a temporary en- 
dowment, but an endless gift. 

" The sun is but a spark of fire, 
A transient meteor in the sky ; 
The soul, immortal as its Sire, 
Shall never die." 

Shall a being, thus highly endowed, 
and destined to an endless duration, be 
crowded down to the level of the brutes 
that perish ? Does any one believe that 
it is in accordance with the Divine will 1 

As from the altitude of the stars, all 
inequaUties of earth's surface disappear, 
so from the stand-point of man's immor- 
tality all distinctions fade away, and 
every human being stands on the broad 
level of equality. To chattelize a ra- 
tional creature, thus endowed and thus 
allied, is to insult and incense the author 
of his being. 

Look at it from another point. Eigh- 



teen centuries ago appeared the most 
iwonderful personage that has ever moved 
among men — the God-man — the Deity 
manifested in human form. After a 
life of chosen poverty, passed amid the 
poor and the lowly, he laid down his life 
to expiate the sins of man. President 
Buchanan, believest tliou the gospel rec- 
ord 1 I know that thou believest. Tell 
me, then, sir, did Christ shed his blood 
for cattle '? Did he lay down his life to 
replevin personal property, to redeem 
real estate ? I tell you, gentlemen, that 
this property claim in man is impiety, 
rank and foul, against God and his an- 
ointed. 

" Eternal Nature ! when thy giant hand 
Had heaved the floods, and fixed the trembling 

land — 
When life sprang startled at thy plastic call, 
Endless her forms, and man the lord of all — 
Say, was that lordly form inspired by thee 
To wear eternal chain.- and bow the knee ? 
Was man ordained the slave of man to toil, 
Yoked with the brutes, and fettered to ihe soil, 
Weighed in a tyrant's balance with his gold ? 
No! nature stamped us in a heavenly mould. 
She bade no wretch his thankless labors urge. 
Nor trembling take his pittance and the 

scourge ; 
No homeless Lybian on the stormy deep. 
To call upon his native land and weep." 

I adopt, with cordial admiration, the 
language of one of England's greatest 
statesmen : 

" While mankind loathe rapine, detest fraud, 
and abhor blood, they will reject with indigna- 
tion the wild and guilty fantasy that man can 
hold property in man." 

In our preamble to the resolutions in- 
viting clergymen to officiate as chaplains, 
we have avowed our belief in Christian- 
ity. One of the divinest utterances of 
that religion is : " All things whatsoever 
ye would that men should do to you, do 
ye even so to them." The President, 
in his recent message, justly says that 
the avowed principle which lies at the 
foundation of the laws of nations is con- 
tained in this Divine precept. 

Take one single feature of Slaverj'- : 
it annihilates the family ; it tolerates no 
home ; it tears with relentless diabolism 
its plowshare beam deep right through 
God's domestic institution; and, having 
levelled it with the dust, rears the devil's 
domestic institution, and transforms the 
home, the house, into a stable, and its 
inmates into cattle. The relation of 
husband and wife, of parent and child, 
and the endearments of the home circle. 



are not and cannot be legally kno-wn 
among the victims of Slaver}-. 

What a contrast between that familj- 
portrayed in the Cotter's Saturday 
Night — though they -were in the depths 
of poverty, though they had been out 
to service during the week ; what a con- 
trast between that rude home and the 
best slave dwelling ! From one springs 
a country's glory and greatness ; from 
the other, a country's decay, shame, and 
disgrace. 

Take away what there is of earthly 
happiness growing out of the endearments 
of home, and how nnich of human felicity 
have you left '? I 'look around me, and 
see scores of men, many of whom have, 
in homes moi'e or less distant, those 
dearer than life. Can any one prove to 
3'ou, gentlemen, by any course of reason- 
ing, that it W'Ould be right, under any 
possible circumstances, to doom those 
children to the auction-block, to be sold 
like cattle? If I can prove that it is 
right to take and chattelize another 
man's children, then he can prove it is 
right to do the same with mine. Make 
it right, as an abstract principle, to en- 
slave one human being, and you have 
broken down the barriers that protect 
every other human being. 

I come now to the constitutional ques- 
tion. The limits that I have assigned 
myself will not allow- a full or even an 
extended discussion of this point. The 
President contents himself with declar- 
ing, in general terms, that the Constitu- 
tion regards slaves as property, and adds 
that this has at last been settled by the 
highest judicial authority in the land. 
The Chief Justice, who, according to the 
Executive, has settled this question, 
also alludes in a general way to the 
Constitution, and bases his dictum on 
contemporaneous history and sentiment, 
rather than upon anything found in that 
instrument. Both these gentlemen pro- 
fess to be strict constructionists of the 
Constitution. Now, I beg to ask them 
upon wdiat portion of the Constitution 
they rely for the support of this prop- 
erty dogma? They say it is in the 
Constitution. I say it is not in the 
Constitution ; and in the absence of all 
proof, my say is as good as theirs. In 
no article, in no section, in no line, word, 
or syllable, or letter, is the idea of prop- 



ertjf in man expressed or implied. It is 
1 mystery to me how any man could ever 
believe it ; and it is a double mystery to 
me how an utterance so absolutely untrue, 
and so slanderous towards the framers 
of the Constitution, could be thrust be- 
fore the Amei'ican people from the Su- 
preme Judiciary, and receive the sanction 
of the Chief Magistrate. An ancient 
Roman prince said, that if truth should 
be driven from every other place, it 
ought to find a home in the hearts of 
rulers. t 

We have fallen upon evil times, when 
a Chief Justice and a Chief Magistrate 
deliberately and officially utter what, 
seemingly, they must know to be un- 
true. Terrible are the necessities and 
exactions of Slavery ! How can these 
gentlemen help knx)wing that these dec- 
larations are untrue? Do they not con- 
tradict the entire history of the eountrj'? 
Do they not contradict the repeated dec- 
larations of Madison on this very point? 
Has he not averred, over and over 
again, that the idea of property was 
carefully kept out of the Constitution, 
so that when Slavery should cease to 
exist in the States, there would be no 
evidence in that instrument that it had 
ever existed at all ? And now this in- 
strument, so instinct with the spirit of 
Freedom, so abhorring the idea of prop- 
erty in man, that it would not be pollu- 
ted with the word slave, slavery, or ser- 
vitude even, this Constitution is assumed, 
by its own inherent force, without any 
.express law or legislative sanction what- 
ever, to carry human chattelism into 
the Territory of Kansas, and if into the 
Territory of Kansas, into the State of 
Kansas ; for what right has Kansas, or 
any other State, to adopt a Constitution 
that contradicts or invalidates the Con- 
stitution of the United States? If the 
slave-owner holds his slave in Kansas by 
a tenure derived from the Constitution, 
I would like to know what power can 
take it away ? If a new State forms a 
Constitution with a clause prohibiting 
Slavery, and comes and asks admission 
into the Union with such an organic law, 
it must be sent back with a mandate to 
strike out the prohibitory clause, as be- 
ing contrary to the Federal Constitution. 
This has at last been settled by the 
highest judicial tribunal in the land. 



} 



6 

And it is a mystery to President ^n- 
clianan Iioav any one ever could doubt 
it. Under this doctrine, carried to its 
logical results, no more free States could 
ever bo added to the Union. Proh pudorf 
To this complexion it must come at last. 
To this complexion it has come already. 
The question now is, whether the coun- 
try shall be the home of Freedom or the 
lair of Slavery ; whether the despotism 
of the fetter and the scourge shall wield 
the sceptrcj and Liberty be driven into 
exile. 

But still farther as to this property 
principle. If human beings are prop- 
erty, as is now claimed, why has Fede- 
ral legislation declared the slave trade 
piracy 1 Is it piracy to go to the coast 
of Africa and trade in elephants' teeth, 
or in palm oil, or in any other article of 
commerce that may be produced xhere ? 
If this property claim is correct, then 
this law is unjust, and ought to he re- 
pealed, unless it is to be considered in 
the light of a protective tariff, to en- 
courage and promote slave breeding at 
home. 

More than this : how often is it that 
when slave-owners lie down upon the 
death couch, and look the future in the 
face, they emancipate their slaves ? How 
often do they do it as a reward for some 
heroic achievement 1 Did you ever hoar 
of men emancipating their cattle in their 
last will and testament '? Do they ever 
bequeath freedom to their swine'? or ex- 
tend that precious boon to a Newfound- 
land dog that had rescued a child from a 
Avatery grave? 

Besid'es, to whom belong all the stray 
cattle that are without owners in this 
country'? There is certainly a goodly 
herd of them. How many millions of 
dollars worth I have not the means at 
hand of estimating accurately. Per- 
haps, at the instance of the President, 
the Chief Justice would enter up a judg- 
ment against them, and enter a capias. 
They iiave no rights that are to be 
regarded. They are property, and all 
property ought to have an owner. They 
would bring a goodly sum, hard as are 
the times, enough to go far towards car- 
rying Pennsylvania for a second term. 
But I meant to be serious, and I will. 

I have no patience with these abhor- 
rent assumptions, for I cannot call them 



arguments, which claim property in man. 
Such claims are an insult to the intelli- 
gence, the Christianity, and the civiliza- 
tion of the age. 

I have a final objection to urge against 
Slavery, and much more against its ex- 
pansion. It lies across our country's 
glory and destiny. 

Century after century rolled over the 
world — nay, whole decades of centuries 
wore wearily away in earth^s history — 
and the dogma gained universal preva- 
lence and belief, that kings ruled by 
right divine. Dei gratia rex was en- 
graven on their. coin. This dogma was, 
by education, incorporated in the com- 
mon faith, and acquired all the strength 
of a religious principle, and all the ar- 
dor of a devotional sentiment. 

I hardly need recite the unhappy 
results that flowed to mankind from the 
prevalence of this dogma. Monarchs 
wielded a sceptre of iron. The masses 
were deemed of no value, only as they 
could minister to the lust, power, or 
ambition, of the ruling class. The 
Government was not made for them, but 
they for the Government. Their blood 
saturated the soil, and their bones en- 
riched it. They had no rights that 
kings were bound to regard. But the 
recital of the woes and wrongs inflicted 
and endured under the supremacy of 
this notion of the Divine right of kings 
would be an illimitable story — it would 
indeed be the history of the human race 
during the cycles of ages that they have 
inhabited the globe. Heaven and earth 
became alike weary of this state of 
things. The period arrived when the 
Great Ruler would introduce a new 
theory of government. The curtain was 
to roll up, and exhibit a new act in the 
earth's drama. America was the thea- 
tre where this manifestation was to be 
made. The old Pilgrim barks, borne 
as by a miracle over the angry ocean, 
came freighted with the elements of a 
new political life, and the germ of a new 
national organization. How they plant- 
ed themselves at Jamestown and Plym- 
outh, you know. How they struggled 
on in their colonial dependence, against 
forest and savage, and British aggres- 
sions, you need not be told. 

Then came the crisis of our fate! 
Our ancestors, Cavalier and Roundhead, 



and I bless their memory, met that crisis 
manfull}', heroically. They came to the 
Revolution, and on its threshold it was 
that God poured that wonderful illumi- 
nation over the mind of Jefferson, and 
inspired the utterance of those everlast- 
ing truths. How grandly majestic they 
come rolling doAvn from the past, bap- 
tized in the blood that flowed from pa- 
triotic hearts ! " We hokl these truths 
to be self-evident — that all men are cre- 
ated equal ; that they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights ; that among these are life, liber- 
ty, and the pursuit of happiness." This 
pi'inciple laid the axe at the root of the 
old and long-dominant dogma, that one 
man, or race of men, was created to be 
kings or nobles, and another to bs per- 
petual peasants and serfs. It placed them 
upon the broad level of absolute equal- 
ity, so far as natural rights were con- 
cerned. It does not say all British sub- 
jects born on this side of the ocean are 
ecjual to those born on the other side of 
it ; it does not say that all English men 
are born equal, or all French men, or 
all Scotch men, or all Dutch men, or all 
white men, or all tawny men, or all black 
men, but all men. That every human 
being endowed with a rational exist- 
ence, created in the image of his God, 
was equally entitled to life and liberty. 
It is on this principle that criminal 
jurisprudence rests. The law in its di^ 
vine impartiality exacts the life of the 
murderer, whatever his position, for that 
of his victim. Whatever m.ay have been 
the intellectual endowments of fehe hom- 
icide, hoAvever exalted his social posi- 
tion, he must pay the forfeit of his life 
for slaying the most abject and idiotic 
of his species. And why 1 Because the 
life of the poor and debased victim was 
as sacred and inviolable as that of his 
gifted and exalted slayer. The one 
was equally entitled to his life as the 
other. So precisely with regard to Lib- 
erty : to that, every human being is 
equally entitled. 

To protect these rights. Governments 
are instituted among men. Not to be- 
stow rights are Governments instituted 
among men, but to protect those which 
God has already given, antecedent to all 
organic forms of government. I do not 
depend upon Parliaments, or Kings, or 



Coipgrcsses, or majorities, for my rights. 
I hold them direct from the Creator 
who formed me. So does every human 
being. The man, or body of men, who 
take away these rights, without the forms 
of law, or Avith the forms of laAV, unless 
forfeited by crime, are despots, tyrants, 
and usurpers, and by the very act forfeit 
their OAvn. 

If a man is robbed of these rights, it 
makes no diiference whether it is done 
by one man called a king, or by many 
men called a majority. I do not sub- 
scribe to that translucent phantom of 
popular sovereignty, when it claims the 
right to enslave men. In a company of 
a hundred men, have ninety-nine the 
right to rob the hundredth, proA'ided 
even it is submitted to them, and they 
have a fair election 1 A majority of a 
hundred men, of which I am one, may 
have the right to make the rules which 
shall operate alike upon us all. But 
when they come to commend an embit- 
tered chalice to my lip, of which they 
Avill not themselves partake, then I say 
they have no right to do it — it is 
Avrong. 

If the people of a Territory or of a 
State Avill vote that they themselves and 
their children shall alike be slaves, I am. 
content. But that a majority have the 
rightful pOAver to take away the natural 
rights of any one single human beings 
I deny. Those rights, I repeat, are given 
and guarded by the common Father of 
us all. And as the parental instincts, 
go forth, with peculiar energy and jeal- 
ousy, toAvards the unfortunate and less, 
favored member of the family circle, 
protecting his interests and avenging his 
wrongs, so the Divine Parent Avatches. 
Avith peculiar vigilance over the rights, 
of the Aveak and hapless ones of earth,, 
and avenges their injuries with a terri- 
ble and unusual retribution. Did ib 
never occur to you, gentlemen, that as. 
Avith the individual, so with the nation 1 
PoAver, elevation, rare endoAvrDcnt, in- 
stead of conferring privilege and pre- 
rogative, impose obligation. The All- 
Wise and AU-Powerful is the All-Good 
as well ; and it is His goodness that 
claims our adoration. And that one ex- 
pression which we have been taught to 
lisp in childhood, and to utter in the 
strength of years — "Our Father" — if? 



IBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



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III' harta of human brot(ier- 
899 441 3 ^ uman equality before God 
and before the law. 

What now is our country's duty, 
destiny, and true glory ? To go maraud- 
ing over the territories of Aveaker na- 
tions, like buccaneers and poltroons, to 
extend the area of Slavery ; to hunt 
down fugitive slaves, and take them back, 
manacled, to bondage ; to break down 
the dykes of Freedom, and let the dark 
and ensanguined Avaters of Slavery rush 
in a destructive flood aver the 'land? 
No ! In the name of the fathers, in the 
name of the Constitution, in the name 
of the Declaration, in the name of our 
dignity and position, and in the name 
of God — no ! The true mission of this 
nation, the work assigned, the trust com- 
mitted, is to reduce to organic form as 
we have already done, and now to illus- 
trate before the Avorld, the great and 
ever-enduring truths that I have recited, 
and thus to exemplify before the nations 
of the earth the principles of civil and 
religious Freedom and Equality, and so 
teach them that their monarchies and 
despotisms are usurpations. I never 
read that Declaration but Avith noAv ad- 
miration and delight. So comprehen- 
sive, yet so full ! Embracing the entire 
Divine theory of human government in 
a single paragraph ! All men, endowed 
by their Creator AA^ith an equal title to 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness ! Governments instituted among 
men to secure these rights, deriving all 
their just powers from the consent of 
the governed ! 

We hear about keeping step to the 
music of the Union. Sir, go build a huge 
organ on the shehdng sides of the Rocky 
Mountains, and let the angel of Liberty 
strike its keys and chant forth that sub- 
lime and grand old anthem of Universal 
Freedom ; and then, as its notes roll OA'er 
the land, solemn and majestic, in God's 
name, sir, I Avill keep step to the music 
of the Union. It is a divine symphony. 
But Avhen you call upon me to keep step 
to the sound of clanking chains and of 
human manacles, to the wild shriek of 
human agony and suffering, I cannot do 
it. It grates upon me like the very 
dissonance of hell. I cannot keep step 
to such music. 



And now, sir, Avhy do we stand thus 
proudly pre-eminent among the nations 
of the earth 1 Why has this nation 
been led to a position so grand and en- 
viable ? Is it because God is any re- 
specter of persons or of nations 1 Not 
that ; but because He has a grand Avork 
for us to do — to lead the Avorld to free- 
dom and_ glory ; to the conscious posses- 
sion and unmolested enjoyment of rights 
divinely given. And Avhy should we 
abandon this position ? Why are Ave 
called upon to betray the high and sol- 
emn trusts committed to our care by 
the Most High? Why are we asked to 
Avheel around from the van in the 
progress of a Christian civilization, and 
with muffled drum and drooping colors 
march liack a decade of centuries into 
the darkness and barbarism of the past ? 
Why shoukl Ave, by our refusal to fulfil 
the destiny plainly marked out for us by 
the finger of God, yield the honor of 
earth's renovation to some other people 1 
What is to reward us for all this shame, 
loss of position, and recreancy to Heaven- 
confided trusts 1 W^ill the clank of hu- 
man fetters on the plains of Kansas, and 
the Avail of man's despair on the Pacific 
shore, compensate us for this sacrifice '? 

Oh, hoAv much more noble and heroic 
for those who have it in their power to 
say, in God's name this evil must be re- 
moved. What a future then flashes on 
our country ! In those ages to come, 
by a natural process of assimilation and 
peaceful expansion, Ave should conquer 
and possess the entire continent. The 
genius of Freedom, on some lofty peak 
of the Rocky Mountains or the Andes, 
should look abroad, northward and south- 
Avard, eastAvard and AvestAvard, and be- 
hold one vast ocean of Republics, bound 
together by the federal compact, 
" Distinct like the billows, yet one like the sea." 
And as the recording angel dropped a 
tear of sorroAv on the good man's oath, 
and blotted it out forever ; so the genius 
of History, Avhen she came to trace our 
record, Avould drop a tear of regret, and 
blot out the fact that Slavery ever ex- 
isted. With this result in vieAV, the 
Constitution Avas formed. 

Shades of the departed, hovering 
around this Hall, I bless your memories 
for that Constitution. 



BUELL & BLANCHAilD, Printers, Washington, D. C. 



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